?8 REPORT — 1851. 



dimensions even on the poorest land. The earth presents a surface of a whitish hue 

 when dry, without mould or humus, being a deep and gritty clay (as I found by fre- 

 quently digging), which I am convinced would not bear any adequate crop without 

 being first well manured. Between the east and west branches of the river Eurete 

 the land is low and sandy. Eastward to the coast is a vast bed of fine quartz gravel 

 covered with heather and luxuriant mosses ; and in some places occurs peat of pretty 

 good quality and considerable depth. There is good timber at the western extremity 

 of the Bluff harbour, and between it and the river Eurete some extent of bush land, 

 in and around which a herd of cattle find suiEcient pasture, but feeding chiefly on 

 the milk-thistle, &c. There is a small community of Europeans at the Bluff and at 

 the Aparima, who have intermarried with the natives, and who, pursuing whaling, 

 sealing and husbandry, and in a few instances stock-keeping, have attained to very 

 comfortable circumstances. Some were in the practice of growing wheat, but they 

 informed me that the climate was unfavourable, rains being frequent and copious, 

 and the gales of wind boisterous. While my vessel lay at anchor in the Eurete in 

 the month of May, we had to encounter, in the surveys executed and on our several 

 exploratory journeys, very inclement weather. Considering, then, the climate, the 

 soil, and the natural growth, I am convinced that there is no very eligible site for a 

 future settlement south of the Mataura river and Tu-tu-rau, a favourite residence of 

 the natives formerly, when they were more numerous, because it afforded shelter 

 from the southern climate, good fishing and fertile land. From Tu-tu-rau north to 

 Otokau, there is an unbroken tract of fertile and well-watered land, affording abun- 

 dant pasture, and much of it of excellent quality for tillage. It abounds with sup- 

 plies of coal, wood, timber, brick-earth and stone, conveniently dispersed through 

 the district and very accessible by the facilities of inland navigation, which its rivers 

 and lakes afford. Again, for fifty miles north of Otokau there is a district presenting 

 ♦-almost equal capabilities for large productiveness. Further north, along the ninety 

 miles beach, extending about twenty-eight miles above Banks Peninsula, there is a 

 vast plain, for the most part either too arid and stony, or too wet and swampy to be 

 eligible for occupation. There is but a very limited quantity of fertile land good 

 enough for tillage within a distance of twenty miles of either of the harbours of 

 Banks Peninsula. The surface of plains in New Zealand usually presents a succes- 

 sion of terraces in lines parallel with the course of the rivers, rising in steps of from 

 six to fourteen feet in elevation ; much of the surface is desolated by closely-im- 

 bedded boulder and shingle, and usually where these occur in the greatest breadth, 

 and where there is a dead level, the surface is the most stony. On the hill lands of 

 Banks Peninsula there is good pasture, but it is not so on the plain. My reasons 

 for rejecting it as ineligible for the site of a settlement, as well as my report of the 

 entire journey of exploration which I made in 1844, are alluded to, but not adduced 

 in the Seventeenth Report of the Directors of the New Zealand Company, and the 

 substance of the same will be presented to the public under the head of Topography 

 of the Middle Islands of New Zealand, in the valuable work on British Colonies, 

 written by R. M. Martin, Esq., which is how published in monthly parts by Messrs. 

 Tallis and Co. _____ 



Ascent of Orizaba in Mexico. By E. Thornton. 



STATISTICS. 

 On the Statistics of New Zealand. By H. S. Chapman. 



The Secretary read a communication by Mr. Cocks "On the Mortality in different 

 Sections of the Metrojiolis in 1849." 



